radiation
in Bukit Merah even after 18 years

Radiation around the Asian Rare Earth (ARE)
plant in Bukit Merah and its permanent waste dump site at Bukit Kledang, both
in Perak, is still at a hazardous level - despite the factory having closed 18
years ago.

The radiation level at the gate of Japan
Mitsubishi chemical's Asian Rare Earth plant's radioactive waste permanent
depository achieved 0.269micro Sv per hour and we also saw the guards were all day
exposed to it.

This disturbing finding was recorded by anti-Lynas
group Save Malaysia Stop Lynas (SMSL) during a fact-finding visit to Perak over
the weekend.

According to SMSL chairperson Tan Bun
Teet (right), SMSL members armed with radiation reading devices were not
allowed to enter the plant and dump site, but the radiation readings around
both locations showed worrying results. The reading near the plant was around
0.19 microsievert per hour while the reading near the dump site stood at about
0.2 microsievert per hour. Both readings, if extrapolated to annual basis, are
beyond the safe level of 1 milisievert per year as advised by the Atomic Energy
Licensing Board ( AELB =MINT =
Malaysian Institute of Nuclear Technology = Nuklear Malaysia = terletak di
belakang Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Bandar Baru Bangi = lokasinya
dikelilingi bukit rendah berhutan dan ramai orang tak tahu di dalamnya juga ada
reaktor nuklear mini beroperasi = Andai loji ini bocor = Next Fukushima
Malaysia ! ), Tan said. The average background reading of Malaysia is 0.05
microsievert per hour.

“It is regrettable that within the 1.7km
buffer zone of the dump site, we still found fish breeding, as well as animal
and vegetable farming activities (left),” Tan said. AELB
had earlier claimed that the plant site has been decontaminated, with radiation levels
dropping from 0.65 microsievert per hour to 0.17 microsievert per hour, which
is safe for human activities. The board also claimed that it had requested the
authorities to move illegal farms and squatters living within the buffer zone
around the waste dump site. The ARE plant run by Japanese company Mitsubishi
Chemicals from the 1980s to the early 1990s, is blamed for spreading radiation
poisoning inas a result of poor management of radioactive waste generated from
processing tin tailings to extract rare earth.

The aftermath of the
factory’s operations has been one of the largest radioactive waste clean-ups in
Asia, with a permanent dumping site set up at the foot of nearby Bukit Kledang.
The anti-Lynas movement has been using the ARE plant as an example to protest
against the Lynas rare earths plant in Gebeng, Kuantan. Members of SMSL also
met with a former contractor who was hired by ARE to dump the radioactive
waste. According to Tan, the contractor, whose three employees carrying out the
job have died at a young age.

The contractor said they
just discarded the waste into empty plots of land within Menglembu and Lahat as
ARE had not specified a dump site. In other words, the polluted areas are
larger than what the authorities had expected, and they are difficult to trace,
Tan elaborated. Tan is also disappointed with the Ipoh Hospital which, he said,
did not trace the backgrounds of cancer patients over the years to determine
whether they were from the affected areas. This matter was conveyed to Tan by
Dr Chan Chee Khoon, an epidemiologist from Universiti Malaya, who has been
following the issue and has had discussions with the medical personnel of Ipoh
Hospital. “This shows that the government did not follow up on the health
conditions of residents in that area,” added Tan.

Lessons from Bukit Merah

Will
the Gebeng story be a replay of the tragic saga that began in 1979 and is yet
to end?

To understand today, we sometimes have to look back at
yesterday. To understand why there is so much opposition to the Lynas rare
earth plant, we have to look at the sad history of Bukit Merah New Village,
just a few kilometres south of downtown Ipoh.

Life changed forever for the mainly Hakka community of
Bukit Merah after Asian Rare Earth Sdn Bhd (ARE) began operations there in July
1982 to extract yttrium, a rare earth, from monazite.

Within a few years, the villagers began noticing
physical defects in their newborns, and at least eight leukaemia cases were
confirmed. Medical examinations on children in the area found that nearly 40%
of them suffered from lymph node diseases, turbinate congestion and recurrent rhinitis.
Seven of the leukaemia victims have since died.

Equally heartrending is the parallel story of the
villagers’ attempt to stop the ARE operations. It was a saga that ran for more
than two decades, and it pitted the villagers, helped by various civic
organisations, against big business and powerful state authorities. An exercise
to decommission the ARE plant finally began in 2003, but the work to
decontaminate the area is still going on and is estimated to cost RM300
million. The New York Times called it “the largest radiation cleanup yet in the
rare earth industry”.

ARE was a collaboration between Mitsubishi Chemical
Industries Ltd (35%), Beh Minerals (35%), Lembaga Urusan dan Tabung Haji (20%)
and several Bumiputera businessmen (10%). The company was incorporated in 1979.

The Penang Consumer Association has compiled a
chronology of events in the Bukit Merah tragedy to help us appreciate the
tenacity of Malaysians who rose to act to protect their health and environment
against a government that placed profit before the people’s welfare.

Here are
some highlights:

1979

Soon after it was incorporated, ARE seeks the advice
of the Tun Ismail Research Centre of the Science, Technology and Environment
Ministry about radioactive waste produced by processing monazite. It is decided
that the waste, the property of the Perak state government, would be stored
with a view to profiting from it as a source of nuclear energy.

1982

June: Residents of Parit, Perak, learn that the
government has earmarked a nine-acre site in their vicinity as a storage dump
for ARE’s radioactive waste. They protested against this and gained the support
of political and social organisations. The government scraps the plan and
begins to look for another dump site. July 11: ARE factory begins operations

1983

In November, residents of Papan, adjacent to Bukit
Merah, find out that ARE is building trenches outside their town to store
radioactive waste. The site was picked by the government.

1984

May 24: About 6,700 residents of Papan and nearby
towns sign a protest letter and send it to the Prime Minister, the Perak
Menteri Besar, the Health Minister, and the Science, Technology and Environment
Minister.

May 31: About 200 residents from Papan protest against
the proposed waste dump. They block the road leading to the site.

June 5: Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad says the
government has taken every precaution to ensure safety and that construction of
the Papan dump will go ahead.

June 18: About 300 Papan residents demonstrate for the
second time against the proposed location of the dump.

June 28: The Science, Technology and Environment
Minister Stephen Yong states that the Papan dump is safe because it is being
built according to stringent standards. He challenges critics to prove that the
dump will be hazardous to health and the environment. Meanwhile, ARE is dumping
thorium waste into an open field and a pond next to its factory.

July 1: About 3,000 people, including women and
children, hold a peaceful demonstration against the Papan dump.

July 18: A Bukit Merah Action Committee is formed,
comprising residents of Bukit Merah, Lahat, Menglembu and Taman Badri Shah, to
support the Papan residents. Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) sends a memorandum to
the prime minister stating that radiation levels at the open field and pond
next to the ARE factory are too high.

Sept 19: Three experts from the United Nations’
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visit the Papan site at the
invitation of the government. They declare the trenches there as unsafe.

Oct 5: A British physicist and safety analyst, William
Cannell, is invited by the Papan residents to visit the dump. He finds the
engineering work to be “extremely shoddy”.

Oct 21: An American expert, Edward Radford, is invited
by the Papan residents to review the dump. He finds that the site is unsuitable
for radioactive dumping and that the walls of the trenches were too thin and
cracked in some parts.

Nov 7: A Japanese industrial waste expert, Jun Ui, is
invited by the Papan people to inspect the waste dump. He finds it unsuitable
for storing hazardous waste.

Nov 28: The Cabinet discusses reports submitted by two
regulatory bodies. The report by the British National Radiological Protection
Board said that residents would be safe only if certain conditions were
observed by the Perak government and ARE. The second report by IAEA said the
trenches did not meet required specifications.

Dec 9: More than 1,500 residents in Papan stage a
one-day hunger strike to protest against the government’s decision to go ahead
with the plan to locate the dump in Papan. Bukit Merah residents bring in a
Japanese radiation and genetics expert, Sadao Ichikawa, to measure radiation
levels at the open field and pond next to the ARE factory. He finds the levels
there dangerously high, the highest at 800 times above the permissible level.

Dec 12: Acting prime minister Musa Hitam declares a
personal interest in the Papan affair. He pays a visit to the dump.

1985

Jan 11: After a Cabinet meeting chaired by Musa Hitam,
the government decides to relocate the proposed dump site to Mukim Belanja in
the Kledang Range, about five kilometres from Papan and three kilometres from
Menglembu.

Feb 1: Eight residents on behalf of themselves and the
Bukit Merah residents file an application in the Ipoh High Court to stop ARE
from producing, storing and keeping radioactive waste in the vicinity of the
village. The Atomic Energy Licensing Act of 1984 is enforced. It ensures that
operators of nuclear installations (including the government) are held liable
for nuclear damage. A five-member Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) is
formed under the Act, with representatives from Puspati.

Oct 14: Justice Anuar Zainal Abidin of the Ipoh High
Court grants an injunction to the Bukit Merah residents to stop ARE from
producing and storing radioactive waste until adequate safety measures are
taken. More than 1,500 residents of Bukit Merah turn up at court to hear the
decision.

1986

Sept 22: ARE claims it has spent more than RM2 million
to upgrade safety measures (as required by the court) that follow IAEA
standards. It invites an American atomic energy expert, EE Fowler (formerly
with the IAEA), to visit the factory. Fowler states that radiation levels near
ARE facilities have met ICRP standards and that the factory is safe for
operation.

Oct 5: About 3,000 residents in and around Bukit Merah
stage a demonstration against ARE’s plan to keep radioactive waste in its
permanent dump in the Kledang Range.

Oct 28: Ichikawa, on his second trip to Bukit Merah,
reveals that radiation around the ARE factory is still above the acceptable
level. He is denied entry into the factory.

Nov 16: A team from AELB checks out a few illegal
thorium waste dump sites in Bukit Merah. It is assisted by ARE ex-contractor Ng
Toong Foo, who had carried out the dumping. Readings at one dump are between
0.05-0.10 millirems/hour, above the maximum safety level of 0.057
millirems/hour set by the ICRP.

Dec 8: Minister Kasitah Gadam of the Prime Minister’s
Department says that radiation levels at two illegal dumps in Bukit Merah
checked by AELB are safe. He says that although the AELB found that the levels
exceeded the normal radiation levels this does not pose a danger as such dumps
are few in number.

1987

Feb 6 : Disregarding the High Court injunction to ARE
to stop operations, the Malaysian AELB grants a licence to ARE to resume
operations.

April 10: Fourteen foreign experts invited by PARC to
Bukit Merah are denied entry into ARE. At a forum held in Bukit Merah, these
experts concur that ARE presents severe health hazards.

April 12: About 10,000 people march through Bukit
Merah in protest against the resumption of operations by ARE.

May 24: Federal Reserve Unit police disperse about 300
people demonstrating near the ARE plant. More than 20, including three women,
are injured in two clashes. ARE’s construction work for a road to the proposed
permanent dump site in the Kledang Range is halted by residents.

July 23: A Canadian doctor, Bernie Lau, is engaged by
PARC to set up radon gas detectors outside ARE. He finds significant amounts of
radon gas escaping from the plant.

Sept 7: The hearing of the suit filed by Bukit Merah
residents against ARE begins before Justice Peh Swee Chin in the Ipoh High
Court. About 1,000 show up in court to give their support.

Sept 11: Residents march from Bukit Merah to the Ipoh
High Court for the last day of hearing. Their number in the court grounds
swells to 3,000.

Sept 18: Bukit Merah residents file contempt
proceedings against ARE for breaking the injunction granted to them by the Ipoh
High Court in 1985.

Oct 27: More than 100 people are detained under the
Internal Security Act. Among them are PARC officials. They are freed after two
months.

November : ARE starts building the permanent waste
dump in the Kledang Range.

1988

Jan 25: The trial resumes.

1990

Feb 13: The trial comes to a close after 65 days of
hearing stretched over 32 months.

1992

July 11: The people of Bukit Merah win their suit
against ARE. The Ipoh High Court orders the shutdown of the ARE factory within
14 days.

July 23: ARE files an appeal at the Supreme Court
against the High Court order. Mitsubishi Chemicals in Japan tells PARC that ARE
filed the appeal without the corporation’s consent.

July 24: Following an ex parte application by ARE, the
Lord President of the Supreme Court suspends the High Court order to ARE to
stop operations.

Aug 3: Over 2,000 people from Bukit Merah turn up at
the Supreme Court to hear the appeal. However, the judges postpone the hearing
to Aug 5 because of “pressure exerted by people picketing” outside the
courtroom.

Aug 5: The Supreme Court allows an application by ARE
to suspend the High Court order. According to the judges, the closure would
bring hardship to the company and its 183 workers.

1993

March 15: The scheduled hearing of the appeal filed by
ARE at the Supreme Court is postponed.

Dec 23: The Supreme Court says it overturned the High
Court decision on two grounds. The court is of the opinion that ARE’s experts
were more believable in the results of the radiation tests. Secondly, the
judges say, the residents should have gone back to the AELB to ask that it
revoke ARE’s licence, because AELB has the power to do so under the Atomic Energy
Licensing Act. The Atomic Energy Licensing Act, however, does not have any
provision for appeals by affected communities or the public for the revocation
of a licence granted to a company.

Despite the success of ARE in their appeal, the
company later stops operations and begins cleaning up, due to public pressure
both nationally and internationally.

1994

Jan 19: ARE announces the closure of its Bukit Merah
plant.

2002

Nov 6: ARE, in a letter to the Consumer Association of
Penang, says it has not begun the decommissioning and decontamination of the
Bukit Merah plant. It says this will happen only when the Perak government and
ARE finalise an agreement.

2003

A decommissioning and decontamination exercise begins.

About seven years later, former premier Dr Mahathir
Mohamad said “a small amount” of nuclear waste was buried in Perak.

“In Malaysia,” he said, “we do have nuclear waste,
which perhaps the public is not aware of. We had to bury the amang in Perak,
deep in the ground. But the place is still not safe. Almost one square mile of
that area is dangerous.”

The Papan-Bukit
Merah story is a tragedy of betrayal of leadership. It is about people
in power losing their moral compass to the pull of profit. Will the Gebeng
story be just as tragic?

Bukit Merah survivor: Our tears have run dry

It
has been nearly 30 years to the day that Lai Kwan first set foot on the grounds
of the Asian Rare Earth (ARE) factory in Bukit Merah, Perak. She had just found
out that she was pregnant with her sixth and youngest child, but poverty left
her little choice as she had to take up a job as a labourer with a local
contractor, hired to build an additional structure at the facility. Unknown to
her, that decision to earn her family’s daily bread would ultimately break her
heart.

Several months after her stint at the ARE plant, her son, whom she asked only
to be identified as Kok Leong, was born disabled.
The boy had severe problems with his eyes, eventually losing sight in his left
eye when he was five. He also suffers from a hole in his heart.

But what pains Lai Kwan the most is that her precious son is mentally
challenged.

Kok Leong is now an adult of 29 years, but his mind is no more developed than a
toddler’s. He has little or no capacity for speech, and he has never been out
of diapers. To keep him from wandering out of the safety of their home, he is
kept at the back of their modest unit - separated from the rest of the world by
a makeshift wire mesh door that stands up to his chest. And that is where Lai
Kwan, now 69, has spent the past three decades, caring for her boy all these
years in much the same way that she had from the first day she brought him
home.

One of Lai Kwan’s daughters had to quit school, even before she finished Remove
class, to help support the family, since her husband had abandoned them and she
could not leave her son’s side. “When you see me and my son, can you feel how I
feel?” she said in Hakka, the only dialect she is fluent in due to her limited
education.

No clue on radiation
exposure

The ARE plant, run by Japanese company Mitsubishi Chemicals from the 1980s to
the early 1990s, is blamed for spreading radiation poisoning in Bukit Merah due
to what is claimed to be its poor management of radioactive waste generated
from processing tin tailings to extract rare earth. The aftermath of the
factory’s operations has been one of the largest radioactive waste clean-ups in
Asia, with a permanent site set up at the foot of nearby Kledang hill.

Ghosts of the health hazards leaking out of the ARE episode resurfaced recently
when plans by Australian mining firm Lynas to build anotherrare earth processing facility,
this time in Gebeng, Pahang, were made public. Recounting her time working on
the ARE premises, Lai Kwan said it was a bit odd that all staff members were
required to wear a thermometer-like pin over their chests whenever they were on
site, which she found out later was used to measure exposure to radioactivity. “Every
time at work, I would smell something really awful. It made me thirsty but
otherwise I didn’t feel anything strange. “I only found out (about radioactive
waste) when the residents of Kg Papan started protesting against the factory
over plans to bury the wastes in the village. The villagers told me about it,”
she said.

Another senior citizen, whose family was also afflicted by radiation poisoning
from the ARE plant, said it has been hard for her youngest daughter, having
been constantly going in and out of the hospital since she was a baby. Panchavarnam
Shanmugam, 55, was working as a labourer clearing forest cover on a plot of
land right next to the ARE factory in 1987 when she noticed a lot of water
being flushed out from the factory. “Our work took us about seven months to
finish. Many times, there would be a lot of water coming from the factory and
it would rise to almost as high as our knees. The water was very smelly,” she
said at her home.

‘My child suffers’

A year later, Panchavarnam’s youngest child, Kasturi, was born and almost
immediately the complications arose. She recounted how as a baby, Kasturi
suddenly suffered inflammation all over her body to the point that she had to
be treated in a sterile environment at the hospital.

Her daughter also had constant, splitting headaches, which came with heavy nose
bleeds and on some occasions, fainting. It was only when Kasturi was around 10
or 11 years old that doctors discovered that she was suffering from leukaemia.
Neither of her two elder siblings has the disease, nor could Panchavarnam
recall anyone in her family having the condition. “She could not run like her
friends, and she just found it hard to concentrate on anything. She can speak
English, but it’s difficult for her to focus... she could not finish her Form
Five,” Panchavarnam (right)
said of her daughter. Kasturi, now 23, is now working in a nearby textile
store, but Panchavarnam noted that her daughter still goes in and out of the
hospital regularly. “It has been hard for her,” said the doting mother. And, as
described by Lai Kwan’s daughter, who asked not to be named, it is hard not
only on those made sick by the radiation but also on their families, who are
helpless to change the fortunes of their loved ones. “I had a hard time in
school before I stopped, because my classmates would make fun of my brother
because of how he is. My mother couldn’t go for wedding dinners, or celebrate
Mother’s Day because there wouldn’t be anyone to take care of my brother. “We
have cried so much that our tears have run dry,” she said.